Intro Post

< 2013 Final | 2014 Semifinals | 2014 Final >

A few days ago, I got a ticket for the Eurovision 2024 second semifinal itself! Not just a rehearsal, but the actual show. And I’ll be sitting right next to my friend Liv in the arena, which is extra cool. I also have a ticket to the evening rehearsal for semifinal 1, which means I’ll see all 37 songs live in person. I’m really excited about this trip, but I’m also worried about encountering protests related to Israel’s participation. Though the contest would’ve had less drama if Israel skipped out this year, I’ve made peace with the fact that they’re participating.

Anyway, enjoy the third shortest post in my Eurovision blog! The only shorter ones are my reviews of 1957 and 1958.

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Introduction

For their third time hosting Eurovision, Denmark once again chose its trusty capital city of Copenhagen, fittingly across the straits of last year’s host city of Malmö. The best option for a building to host turned out to be a former shipyard on what was once an industrial island, which was transformed into “Eurovision Island” for the sake of this contest. Other options included a boxy arena in a small town called Herning, an impromptu tent by the Danish broadcaster’s headquarters, and a former prison. I think if this was a 20th century contest, DR would’ve probably chosen Herning, but these days there are so many tourists that visiting in a small town just can’t work out. Either way, they had no choice but to choose an unusual location! Leave it to the Danes to do something weird and unconventional.

This year featured a lineup of 37 countries: Poland and Portugal returned from last year, whereas Bulgaria, Croatia, Serbia, and surprisingly Cyprus skipped out. Poland was able to return because the EBU abolished the rule that a country could only join if they had broadcast the previous grand final. As they’ve done many years, Bosnia and Herzegovina originally wanted to participate but then changed their mind. This means this will be even shorter than my previous semifinal post, with only 11 songs.

The voting system was mostly the same as 2013, but to prevent the voting scandals that happened that year, all the juries had to agree to have their names and full rankings publicly released, and they could not consist of anyone who was part of the past two years’ juries. In the semifinals, six countries either had their televotes malfunction or not enough votes to be counted as valid, so their results had to be 100% jury. The rest used a hybrid of jury and televote. I should also note that Denmark went back to three hosts this year, this time two men and one woman.

Watching the 2013 final with my friend Liv was so much fun, now I can never go back to watching the contest alone (though I’ll still rewatch the songs alone, to collect my thoughts better). I hope you don’t mind her name popping up a lot! We watched the semifinals with German commentary. I wanted to try British commentary at first, but I don’t really like those semifinal commentators. They’re mostly just talking to each other and they talk over the hosts a lot.

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Latvia: Cake to Bake

Artist: Aarzemnieki

Language: English, plus two short phrases in Latvian (one repeated, one just once)

Key: F♯ major

I love that the postcard for this song matches its title! I love the postcards this year in general; Liv says they’re her favorite Eurovision postcards of all time. They feature each contestant assembling their country’s flag in all sorts of creative ways, a similar concept to 1998 but done much better.

Imagine if every country’s postcard related to the song titles (or lyrics). What if Sanna Nielsen pressed Ctrl-Z on her computer, then the Swedish flag appeared on her screen? I have no idea what kind of postcard Estonia would have though.

The deliberately planned running order means we won’t start with crap songs anymore. This song was put straight into the death slot, because you have to do something with the ones that just aren’t very good. This song manages to be twee and dull at the same time, not to mention inane.

Estonia: Amazing

Artist: Tanja Mihhailova-Saar

Language: English

Key: E♭ major

Me: What the hell are they doing on stage?

Liv: I think it’s called dancing.

It annoys me every time singers start a Eurovision song while lying down. Don’t ask me why it annoys me, it just does. This is just a mediocre overchoreographed dance anthem. I think she’s trying to show off her ability to sing while doing crazy dance moves, and it’s technically impressive but the song is unremarkable. Most songs this year are overchoreographed in some way, which makes the simpler performances stand out. We’ll see a perfect example in the next post.

Albania: One Night’s Anger

Artist: Hersi Matmuja

Language: English, for the first of four years in a row

Key: F major, C major, and F minor in alternation, I think? Shit, this is a tough one.

I never realized how weird it is to hear Albania singing in major key until this song. I just checked all my reviews of Albania’s prior songs and apparently 2004 and 2013 were in major key. Though I did say 2013 had elements of minor key, and so does this. I don’t think I love this song, but it’s an interesting moody composition with a lovely 6/8 time signature and guitar solo and did not deserve second last place. I could see it growing on me.

Belgium: Mother

Artist: Axel Hirsoux

Language: English

Key: E minor

I’m glad I’m not Belgian right now, because if I was, I’d think “what the hell have we been doing the past few years?” Maybe I should just change my nationality in every era of Eurovision I’m reviewing, for the sake of maximum happiness. Or I could just pretend I’m Portuguese all the way through, because I have huge respect to them remaining true to themselves.

This is yet another weird dreary ballad and I agree with Erica, it’s hard not to interpret the lyrics as incest. His mother is “more than a soulmate”, seriously? There are many other Eurovision songs that describe the singer’s love for their parents in a less weird way. “När jag blundar” for mothers, “You Let Me Walk Alone” for fathers.

Moldova: Wild Soul

Artist: Cristina Scarlat

Language: English

Key: D minor, E♭ minor

A nice thing about this year’s postcards is that unlike 1998, they don’t take an easy way out for flags that feature complex symbols. Cristina carves the shape of the Moldovan eagle onto the middle of her clay pots, then paints it on.

Anyway, this is sadly a Moldovan dud entry. It’s just a mediocre dubstep dance song with a pointless key change. Liv said that it’s not awful, just annoying, and I agree.

Portugal: Quero ser tua

Artist: Suzy (Susana Guerra)

Language: Portuguese

Key: D minor, E♭ minor

This is sort of like a Portuguese counterpart to “Ik ben verliefd (Sha-la-lie)” from 2010: most Eurovision fans don’t have strong feelings about it, but Portuguese fans despise it and consider it the cheesiest schlager to ever exist.

I’m told that this is the closest that Portugal has come to sending a normal dance pop song, and Portuguese fans were not happy about this style. Apparently it’s pimba music, which is the Portuguese equivalent of tacky schlager. It’s not bad or anything and it still sounds fairly Portuguese, but it’s underdeveloped and repetitive. Still, I can’t stay mad at Portugal for sticking to their lovely language.

Semifinal 1 thoughts:

This was a pretty decent semifinal. All the good and semi-good stuff made it through, except for Albania, which is the only non-qualifier I feel sad about.

The interval act in this semifinal is unusual because it didn’t occur between the televoting time window and results, which is when the interval acts normally happened since 1997. Instead, the interval act occurred during the voting time window, and after that came a bunch of videos and skits. You could technically define those skits as the actual interval act(s), if you’re going by where they’re placed in the show, but the interpretive dance based on Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales was clearly intended to be the interval act. It was good musically, but too avant-garde for me and I can’t say I connected to it. I also didn’t like the skits anywhere near as much as 2013—I spaced out through those and jolted awake in the qualifier reveals. The Eurovision Records book was charming though.

Most of the qualifier reveals made me think “nice, good pick!”, instead of “meh, what’s the next one?” like 2011 to 2013. This is an indicator of a good semifinal—not an outstanding semifinal, but a good one. Two made me jump out of my seat: San Marino because it’s always exciting when a country first qualifies, and the Netherlands because their song is fucking amazing in every way and should have beaten Austria. I’m also pleased that Montenegro qualified for once, especially because there were no other former Yugoslav countries in this semifinal, but I hadn’t realized this was their first time.

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Israel: Same Heart

Artist: Mei Finegold

Language: English and Hebrew

Key: B minor, C♯ minor

The only interesting thing about this song is that it ended the streak of Israel singing at least partly in Hebrew. Otherwise it’s just a repetitive four-chord dance song with a pointless key change and too many language switches.

Georgia: Three Minutes to Earth

Artist: The Shin and Mariko Ebralidze

Language: English

Key: E major

After sending a sappy swedo-pop ballad, Georgia is back to normal this year, which is to say the opposite of normal. As with many Georgian entries, I admire this country for doing what ever it wants but this is just too incoherent. It’s some kind of jazz fusion song with yodeling that refuses at all costs to sound predictable.

Speaking of Georgia, after Slovenia’s song we saw a flag of the U.S. state of Georgia. Was this a cheeky pun on the country, or an American expressing some stately pride? Now I want to bring a flag of Ohio to Eurovision just for funsies. It would be an easy way for anyone watching the 2024 second semifinal to notice me, assuming the camera ever points to me.

Lithuania: Attention

Artist: Vilija Matačiūnaitė

Language: English

Key: C♯ minor

One of the fan unfavorite entries of 2014, this is commonly seen as shouty and annoying but I don’t think it deserves all the hate. It has a nice pumping beat and almost hypes me up, but I can’t say I want to come back to it. I know this because I did hear it once some time last year and didn’t care about it enough to revisit it.

Ireland: Heartbeat

Artist: Can-linn featuring Casey Smith

Language: English

Key: A minor

There is only one year where Ireland has qualified to the finals after 2013, and that is 2018. Let’s hope Bambie Thug in 2024 gets rewarded for sending something different! If not, Ireland’s future in Eurovision could be dire.

This is just an average four-chord dance song with some traces of Irish folk instruments, which would be less weird if this wasn’t written by a bunch of Swedish songwriters. It’s a pet peeve of mine when Swedish songwriters make a superficial effort to sound like the country their song is supposed to be for. They’ve done it for Spain, Ireland, Azerbaijan, and even France in 2020. Peter Urban said the folk dance elements were reminiscent of Riverdance, which really only goes to show how influential Riverdance was.

North Macedonia: To the Sky

Artist: Tijana Todevska, whose sister was in Eurovision 2008

Language: English

Key: C♯ minor

My notes say this is alright, inoffensive, normal, and blends into the average modern Eurovision pop soup and I’m right. I always like former Yugoslav countries better when they send something recognizably Balkan.

Semifinal 2 thoughts:

Again, this semifinal had a better lineup than those of 2011 to 2013, but it wasn’t as exciting as the first one. This time, it had two interludes that felt like traditional interval acts. During the voting time window, we had an Australian counterpart to the Swedish Smörgåsbord, then a boring regular musical act by a future Australian representative. This and 2013 both had plenty of foreshadowing that Australia would join the contest. And during the time where interval acts are traditionally performed, we had a cute little dance performance of people all around Europe ranging from 8 to 83 years old. Unfortunately some voting errors (I assume involving the Georgian jury) caused the show to run overtime, so the space was filled with a third recap of all the songs.

Most of the interval content was pretty boring to watch, but once again I snapped awake when the qualifier reveals began. Most of the qualifiers made me think “yeah, that’s a decent pick”. Austria was deliberately put last, which must have been so nail-biting for viewers! They’re the qualifier reveal that made me happiest, though I should note I have a complex relationship with “Rise Like a Phoenix”. Not at all because Conchita is a drag queen, but because while it is an awesome song, the runner-up this year is so much better. I’ll elaborate on that in my next post.

For once, Eurovision 2014 has zero non-qualifiers that broke my heart! They successfully filtered out all the crap songs. The only one I’m somewhat sorry about losing is Albania.

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See you next time for a much longer blog post about the grand final. I have rants in mind about three different songs this year.

>> 2014 (Final): Facial Hair on the Top and Bottom